Soundscape and Sound Art

Ecology- in terms of soundscape- aims to raise the level of consciousness about acoustic environments and help to realise the interactive relationships between emotion and understanding in pleasure, as stated in Helmi Jarviluoma-Makeia's article 'Re-sounding pleasure in soundscape studies.'

The reading for this week was an introduction into the lecture of sound art where it was discussed what sound art was, as well as delving into particular artist's works and intentions when working with sound. The exploration was broken into two sections, which were each divided into two sub-catagories:

What is sound art?

#1) Sound/ space- how sound activates space and the architecture's impact on sound ("composing space"). For example, Leitner's 'Serpentinata' has the intention of using sound to isolate the audience when listening and entering the space to bring self-awareness upon them.
#2) Strange sounds/ strange media- "sound is all our dreams of music. Noise is music's dream of us." (Morton Feldman) In this particular instance, we looked at 'avant-garde music.' This is where artists are experimental, using instruments and noises that weren't considered as musical. These artists, like John Cage  and Pierre Schaeffer were revolutionary in the music world, thanks to the development of technologies, like the microphone and record, that allowed for sounds to be captured in a way that broke from the traditional methods of live performance.

Sound as media art:

#1) "The break-down of the tool"
#2) Electronic popular music- "as listening to machines making mistakes." This section was particularly enlightening, as it deemed relevant to the popular music culture of present day. Quite often, electronic music is taken for granted, and sometimes can be considered musically lazy, however it is in fact an evolution of the avant-garde revolution of the early 20th century. Artist and music journalist, Kodwo Eshun spoke of the music being like "electricity" itself and this manipulation of sound generates a rhythm that is calling up a response in the listener's body, and this is what music essentially is: it is a medium that is to affect a listener mentally, emotionally and physically.

Soundscapes and sound art is constantly being explored and developed; new ideas and sounds are created, each initiating an experience for the listener/ audience.

Sound

If you were to sit in a room and not speak, and no one else is speaking- there is silence, until you listen carefully and realise that there are plenty of sounds that are being made. You may be sitting in the library and there may be a bird chirping outside or a dog barking. The click of a pen, the tapping of the keyboard, the turning pages of a book. Someone sneezing, another coughing, the squeaking of a chair, the sound of the heating or air conditioner. Either way, even when you are quiet, there is noise.

Noise is one of the aspects of sound; it is the unwanted or undesirable, coming from the term of 'nausea.' However, it is interesting to know that over the past century, noise has become the focus in many musical genres. For example, composer John Cage is interested in the idea of noise overlapping other noises and wanting to highlight the concept that music listening also involves the other sounds that are present in the place you are listening from (like the additional sounds in the room around you) and that no matter how many times a piece is played or performed, the experience is different each time. He demonstrates this in his radically famous piece '4:33'

The other aspects of sound is hearing (our auditory perception- sound travels in waves and is very much a physical thing, so hearing is how we perceive the waves) and listening, which is focussing in on a particular sound, as well as reverberation, which is the bouncing of sound. This last one in particular is crucial for performance spaces, in terms of acoustic and whether a certain style of sound is suited in a particular context. If we were to look at music and the different genres, the space in which music is played impacts a great deal with how a listener experiences the performance. David Byrne elaborates on the concept of how mankind has leant to "adapt and change what we do to fit the context"over time in terms of music...



Reference:

John Cage's 4:33 retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEFKFiXSx4

Ted Talks, uploaded on 11th June 2010, David Byrne: How architecture helped music evolve, retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se8kcnU-uZw 

Image Project

Initial interpretation: an elderly man who displays an air of humbleness, looking away from the viewer, with his head bowed down in contentment or in compassion. Black and white, contrasting to the young boy running past in bright colours of blue and red, who is not aware of the photographer. Questions: who is this man? who is this boy? What are their importance in being captured in an image?

In context: This is a photograph of graffiti artist, JR's work from 'Wrinkle of the city of Havana' which is part of a series of pastings and murals in Havana that have been featured in a short Cuba film documenting these images. "'Wrinkles of the City,' [is] a global series of public art installations and expressionistic murals centered around enigmatic portraits of the residents in each metropolis, from Berlin to Shanghai..." (Nowness, 2014)

Using photographs from the internet, I recreated this image with the intention to recontextualise the initial interpretation, with the idea of reversing the image of the young and old, producing an emulations that covers different kinds of issues about the society in which we live in.

The process: the background features a wall of graffiti that displays more signatures and logos as a type of vandalism, rather than the established street art of JR.

Background layer

I wanted to use a background that has bright colours, which differs from the original's pastel blue/green wall. In a way, I'm transferring the reds and blues of the younger boys clothes onto the new wall, but not only his colour scheme, but also youth itself has been moved to the wall, rather than the old man and the old, chipped wall of the original.

2nd layer- adding an upset babies face

 When deciding a youth's face, I wanted to use a photograph that was completely opposite from the content and compassionate old man, resulting to this image of a upset and sad baby. Another significant difference with this new profile on the wall is that the baby is looking directly at the camera, which should stimulate a feeling of compassion within the viewer, which contrasts greatly to the original, because in that, the old man, with his head bowed, it is as if he is looking compassionately at something (perhaps the young boy running past). So, even though the age and composure of the baby and man are different, there are still the same emotions present, but now the giver and the recipient are changed. 

3rd layer- adding the old man

Just like the reversal of the subject on the wall, the same has been done for the figure in the foreground; instead of the young boy running past, heading towards the right, I have added an old man walking past, heading towards the left. This change of direction was deliberate; if you were to imagine a timeline that runs left to right, the original boy is heading towards the future with a whole life ahead. But here, the old man is facing the past, knowing that his life has been lived. Also, his image is neither black and white like the image on the wall, nor in colour like the original boy, but is captured in sepia, as if fading away, which contributes to the concept of knowing that his time was in the past.

Touching up- the most challenging part

The most challenging part of the process of emulation was touching up on the finer details: erasing around the walking sticks. It involved zooming up on the man and slowly and thoroughly rubbing out without accidentally rubbing out the sticks themselves. But eventually, the end result of the emulation:

The emulation's possible meaning: figuring out this young generation's placement in the present world and the older generation's placement in the present world. The wall is covered with quotations and signatures by different people, leaving a mark in history, to call out for help or to just to be remembered somewhere. There is always new paint being added constantly (differs from the peeling paint of the original), mainly reds and pinks, that can be associated with passion: love, hate, anger, lust... The baby on the wall is crying out, pleading for someone to show some sympathy (differs from the humble old man of the original), while the old man walking past is also looking directly at the viewer, in despair for what the world has come to, and wanting to return to the past, to a much pleasanter time (differs from the young boy running towards something in the original). 

These alterations have transformed the original message left by JR, while still containing the same types of people and emotions, just presented with different roles. 

References:

 JR & José Parlá: Wrinkles of the City (online), 24th July 2014, Nowness, retrieved 14th August 2014 from http://www.nowness.com/day/2014/6/24/3954/jr-and-jose-parla-wrinkles-of-the-city 

Playing around photoshop

This was my first time I used photoshop, with the task to create a collage. With my enthusiasm, I created a portrait with this symmetrical and expressionless face as my 'blank canvas:'

and turned it into a multilayered portrait that features three other faces to replace certain features, creating a non-recognisable hybrid:

The original face that I began with was empty, the eyes cold the mouth giving away no feelings, so I sought it as my mission to transform that devoid-of-emotion canvas into something that spoke many different things to a viewer. Firstly, I turned the background layer into black and white, then adding the eyes and nose from an old man who, I thought, displayed empathy and weariness about the world.  The eyes are seen as the 'gateways to the soul,' so I decided to enhance the blueness, which can be associated with clarity, melancholy, as well as dreaming and calmness, which enhanced the emotions that I saw when I first looked at the image of the old man, and replacing the models void-like "soul." The mouth was taken from an image of another old man from a third world country, who is smiling despite his situation, which I thought contrasted greatly with the straight face of the background, who is a young woman from a first world country. I had the hope to spark some thought in the viewer, so I added the fiery red hair as a prompt to that, which also contributed to the absurdity of the mismatch face. The hand I decided not to turn black and white because I liked the idea that it could be owned by someone else, but that is open to interpretation, like the rest of the portrait: it is open to interpretation. 

Colour

Humans have three primary colours- other animals on the other hand, can see colours beyond our imaginings. A bee can see more of the ultraviolet end of the colour spectrum, and flowers are more ultraviolet in colour, attracting bees for their survival. Meanwhile, snakes, sharks and other predatory animals of that nature, can see more of the red end of the spectrum. The eye is a unique and fascinating machine in a living body... we are optically driven. Light is the first media performed and it's through the fragmentation of light that we experience these colours and are personally effected (how the light let's us see things) and affected (how light and colours make us feel things).

Despite the mechanics of the eye and the frequency with light and the electromagnetic spectrum, with different wave lengths and frequencies, let's focus more on the affects of colour, of how we perceive things individually and culturally. To elaborate with this idea of colours changing in meaning through different cultural backgrounds, let's use the example of the colour white:

• In Western culture, white is seen as a colour of purity, which differs from Mexican culture, who see white as the colour of death. 
• "The experience of colour is closely related to the experience of light and is also a matter of cultivation. As much as perception is linked with memory and recognition, our relation to colour is closely derived from our cultural habitat. The Inuit, for instance, have one word for red but various for white." (Elaisson 2006, pp 75)

Because of this concept of colour stimulating the body and mind (colour psychology) due to experience, this means that association of colours would also vary between the cultures/ cultural upbringing. One of the most stereotypical colour associations in the western world would be the idea of blue being a "boys colour" and pink being a "girls colour." Interestingly enough, the reverse was what it traditionally was perceived up until the early twentieth century; blue, being a delicate colour and representative of the Virgin Mary, was a colour worn by girls, while pink was a strong and more outgoing colour, so it was worn by boys. This is a classic example of how colour association is not fixed and is forever changing and adapting. (For further information about the history of the pink and blue in terms of gender, click here.)

"Colour has in its abstraction an enormous psychological and associative potential, and even though it has been cultivated to the extreme, [like the blue and pink] the amount of individuality in experiencing colours is equally extreme." (Eliasson 2006, pp 75-6) This means, in terms of media and multimedia, colour plays a crucial role in one's interpretation of a particular thing. For example, a propaganda poster may use extravagant contrasting colours, for example: red (which can be associated with passion, anger, love, strength) against a colour such as yellow (making the red stand out even more). This would be to invoke a certain thought, feeling and emotion...

References:

Eliasson, Olafur, “Some Ideas about Colour,” Olafur Eliasson: Your Colour Memory, Ismail Soyugenc and Richard Torchia, Exhibition catalogue, Glenside: Arcadia University Art Gallery, 2006: 75-83.

Hartmann, Margaret 2011, The History of pink for girls, blue for boys, Jezebel, viewed 12th August 2014, http://jezebel.com/5790638/the-history-of-pink-for-girls-blue-for-boys 

3 Point Perspective

One of our activities for this week was to attempt a three point perspective drawing. Drawings that have a 3D element to it use vanishing points, whether it be a one-point perspective, two-point perspective or three-point perspective. The vanishing point is the place where all the objects featured in the picture lead off from on a horizon, or off the page, thus giving it the 3 dimension effect,  allowing the drawing to be accurate to how one would see an actual object vanishing into the distance.

One-point example:

retrieved from http://exploringmediaarts.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/perspective/

Two-point:

retrieved from http://exploringmediaarts.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/perspective/

My own three-point attempts:

This is my own, however I saw a similar image as inspiration on google images

'Ways of Seeing'

John Berger's first episode of his 1972 documentary 'Ways of Seeing,' is rather enlightening, as it allows one to notice the contemporary persons' "ways of seeing," which we otherwise take for granted. The preliminary video- before our continuation on from our introduction to what 'exploring media arts' entails- Berger "questions some of the assumptions usually made about the tradition of European painting" and "the way that we now see them in present day" (Berger, 1972) by providing us with visual and audio examples to demonstrate his contention. In the end credits, it is acknowledge that many of the ideas that were elaborated in this half hour program were first outlined in an essay by Walter Benjamin (German literary critic) in 1936.

An overview of the points in which Berger wished to convey were that: due to the technology of the modern day- with camera's and the ability to replicate original European artwork- changes the way in which a viewer perceives the work. This means that, before this advancement in technology, one would only be able to see a particular painting in one place, and that one place would house the original. Whereas today, we are able to witness a replica, whether it be a photograph of the original, a printed copy of the original, or even watching a program like John Berger's and seeing the original through the camera, which means that we aren't seeing the painting like it would look if it were right before our eyes without having a lens obscuring and manipulating it. And since we are now able to view a painting anytime and any place, the context of the painting changes too, as it no longer is in it's intended spot. For example, many masterpieces during the Renaissance were commissioned to be placed in churches or in grand buildings, but now it is possible for that same masterpiece to be found in one's own home, thus, manipulating it from it's original context.

Berger then continues to discuss how other medias have the ability to manipulate how the audience perceives an image. For example, if one were to hear a piece of music while looking at a work of art, it subtly changes your subconscious into seeing it in a unique way, different to how you would have seen it if you were to listen to another piece of music, or if there was just silence. And this silence is what Berger then highlights, saying "the most important thing about paintings themselves is that their images are silent, still" and that "occasionally this uninterrupted silence and the stillness can be very striking." (Berger, 1972)

He explains that the most obvious ways of manipulating a painting would be via the mediums of sound- like explained previously- but also through the use of movement and focus. This links back to the idea of making replicas of an original piece. By zooming up on one area of a painting, a viewer's concentration is immediately drawn to what is right in front of them, losing the content of the piece as a whole, and losing 'the bigger picture.' This ease of manipulation of an image also demonstrates the ease in which one can manipulate a viewer.

We see a woman's portrait

Which comes from Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus'

 Towards the end of the program, Berger then demonstrates that "when painting are reproduced it becomes a form of information," implying that the "meaning of an image can be changed according to what yo see beside it or what comes after it."(Berger, 1972) Throughout the entire episode, John Berger is speaking in a discussion-like tone, addressing the viewer, which engages them and allows them to interact with the examples that Berger chooses to display, which is extremely beneficial for the viewer to understand the impact of a painting when it has been modified, and the different "ways of seeing."



References:

Berger, J (1972), John Berger/ Ways of Seeing, Episode 1 (1972), (online video), 8th October 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk

Image found at http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/botticelli/venus.jpg.html